Should I switch my Neovim config from VimScript to Lua?

mrmanager, 10 months ago

Yes you should.

It’s not hard to learn once you get over that first stage of not even knowing what a lua table is, and mentally accepts that arrays start at 1, not 0 :)

mawkler, 10 months ago

It should be noted that as long as you’re on Neovim you can still keep your VimScript plugins and your VimScript config and gradually start using Lua plugins and Lua scripting. You don’t need to do a complete rewrite over night.

There’s no real downside to switching to Neovim. It’s basically a superset of Vim, only with better defaults and more capabilities that you can opt-in to if you’d like (Treesitter, native LSP client, Lua, etc.).

ScreaminOctopus, 10 months ago

Switched a few years back when I decided to mostly rewrite my config from scratch. It’s definitely nice to use a normal programming language for your config, plus I’ve been doing a few things here and there that I never would have bothered with if I was still using vimscript. To top it off, I’m pretty sure you have to at least do some Lua work if you want to take advantage of the built in lsp support, which I make use of extensively.

bennyp, 10 months ago

It depends on what your expectations are and how you see your relationship to your editor (sorry for the cringe anthropomorphism)

If you want to tinker and think of tweaking your editor as a hobby, then sure dive in

If your config already works and you don't need the hassle, then don't

In between? Want to use a specific lua plugin but don't want to commit? You can do that too

markstos, 10 months ago

I recently switched.

Expect no noticeable speed difference.

Two reasons I switched:

1. Simplicity.  I only have one language to remember and use. 
2. I hated VimScript. It seems like a config file syntax that should never grown into a full programming language. Lua is simple and pleasant to learn and use.